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There’s one bottle I’ve had the opportunity to try a few times over the last 7 years or so, but I’ve never sat down to really study it and take notes – The Al Young 50th Anniversary bottling of Four Roses. Each time someone pops up with one, the party always stops and everyone swoops in to give it their full attention – and for good reason. It’s probably one of the top 10 most beautiful bottle designs in modern bourbon.
But bourbon is more than just the package that it comes in – it’s about the quality of the liquid inside. When it comes to this particular bottle, there are lots of strong opinions out there. The most common take I hear is that this bottle is not as special as you would think. To most, it’s a complete letdown.
Four Roses Al Young 50th Anniversary
In Four Roses lore, there are three primary names that people recognize. Jim Rutledge – the master distiller that reinvigorated the brand and its quality after it was brought back to the US market. Brent Elliot – the master distiller that replaced Rutledge. And Al Young – the brand ambassador who travelled extensively to bring people all over the United States the good news of Four Roses.
Al Young wasn’t always a brand ambassador for Four Roses, but he had held many jobs – big and small – after being hired in 1967. He eventually graduated to “Plant Manager” in 1990. Shortly thereafter he began to research and record the history of the brand because he felt it was important to preserve. His work didn’t go unnoticed by his bosses who awarded him with the title of Brand Ambassador in 2007. This is what many enthusiasts remember him as today.
Four Roses wanted to commemorate Al by giving him his own limited edition release where he would oversee the final blend. According to interviews with Al around the time of the release, he was unfamiliar with the ins and outs of the blending process. Luckily, Brent Elliot stepped in to provide guidance on the matter. He advised Al to come up with a list of certain profile notes he wanted the final product to have. From that point, his barrel selection team went about pulling samples of barrels that had those flavor components for him to try. The final blend saw him use a ratio of 23-year OBSV (5%), 15-year OBSK (25%), 13-year OESV (50%) and 12-year OBSF (20%).
Four Roses also had one more surprise for Al – a special bottle produced to mimic a bottle of Four Roses as it would have appeared in 1967 (the year Al was hired). Here’s a picture of an ad from back then (see below). One thing to notice is that the whiskey that Four Roses sold back then was actually a blended whiskey. This was because Four Roses’ parent company (Seagram’s) had shifted the brand away from weak-selling bourbon to a whiskey that was more light in profile. This was because brown spirits fell out of favor to the public after World War II and wouldn’t rebound in sales until the 2000s.
Four Roses only made 10,000 of these reproduction bottles (about 3,800 bottles less than the 2017 SmBLE) and we’ve never seen them again. In the world of glass production, this must have been an enormously expensive undertaking. I’ve read that designing a new glass mold from the ground up can cost around $100,000! It’s very likely that Four Roses has permanently retired this mold.
I recently created a visual breakdown of all the Small Batch Limited Edition releases that have come out since 2008. I decided to include the Al Young release in with the rest since it’s technically considered a “Limited Edition” bottle. Here’s where it fits with the rest of those releases:
So how does it taste? Let’s find out. Thanks to my friend Mike over at Mostly Peaceful Bourbon for the opportunity to share this bottle with me. He saved it up for a special occasion that will be remembered for quite some time. Cheers, Mike! I sampled this neat in a glencairn.
Tasting Notes
Nose: The fruit notes immediately stand out to me upon my first sniff. I can detect something close to a orange and apricot marmalade with a side of baked apples. The vanilla notes are also very upfront as well. A beautiful caramel and honeycomb combination note might not be the most interesting scent here, but it’s one that feels slightly more special than normal.
Palate: The oak from the 23 year OBSV seems like it reaches out and grabs your attention first. Then comes some stronger rye notes like sweet mint, licorice, citrus oil and cinnamon. I also find a bit of floral flavors as the drink goes one – geranium perhaps. These are common for me to find in recipes using the F yeast strain and it just so happens that Al selected an OBSF for his blend.
The fruit notes (cherries, plum, fig) seem more dry and leathery as opposed to sweet and juicy. They’re here, it’s just that it doesn’t have that sort of “Juicy Fruit gum” profile that so many Private Selection barrel picks seem to have. Flavors of pine needles, Grade-B Maple Syrup and some orchard fruit also can be found.
Finish: The ending continues turning in the direction of a bit more dry and less sweet. The traditional sweet and juicy notes haven’t outright exited the room, but it’s odd how they seem to be on the way out. There is much more tannins on the ending (leather and oak) than I’d typically find in a Four Roses product. There’s also this mild peppery taste that seems to linger for a very long time.
Score: 8/10
This was a hard bourbon to rate. On one hand there’s the whole “rarity factor” surrounding it as well as Al Young’s reputation in the enthusiast community. Then he passed away in late 2019 and that made the market explode with interest in his legacy. So it feels bad to say anything negative about this bottle.
But in my totally honest opinion, the hype doesn’t necessarily match the liquid inside. In my previous attempts at tasting this release, I never really enjoyed it at the level of a typical limited time offering, especially one from Four Roses. It’s funny because most people I know that own this bottle also feel the same way. Yet they still decided to purchase it because of the special lore behind the bottling. Mark my words that when Jimmy Russell gets called to that great big DSP in the sky, we will all be buying anything and everything with his name on it, too.
Final Thoughts
My most recent session with this bottle may have been the best experience I’ve had so far. But in order to have that experience, I changed about how I drank it. For starters, I had it by itself early on in the day when my taste buds were at their most receptive. I enjoyed it in a quiet space with nobody else around to interrupt my notes or trying to persuade me about their opinion. This allowed me to carefully consider each aspect of the bourbon and come to a rating based on how much I was wow’ed. This is the score it received.
If I had based this review solely on the night I had my first sip at Mike’s, it might not have climbed much beyond a 7. We had it with that year’s (2017) SmBLE and there was no contest in my eyes (and many of the others in the room that night).
I will fully admit that there are many middling bottles out there can achieve a higher rating if I rate them under similar conditions (which I do try to do for all of my reviews). But there is something to be said if a bottle of whiskey can only be enjoyed under certain conditions. Do we all drink our whiskies so thoughtfully all the time? Absolutely not. But many of the best whiskies are the ones that can be enjoyed no matter what the situation is and Al Young’s 50th Anniversary just can’t do it. All of this begs the question: if it can’t be enjoyed anytime, anywhere, can it really be that fine of a spirit to begin with?